


Sandwich

by vyatka



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: "women's rights!" -the winter soldier, Cannibalism (Implied), Gen, Hyenas, but as metaphors, poland - Freeform, prison escapes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-03 05:30:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13334481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyatka/pseuds/vyatka
Summary: Did you know, Bucky would say out loud to himself, if his mouth worked, that wolves don’t care if their prey is dead before they start to eat it?





	Sandwich

The hunger pulses red-black in the back of Bucky’s throat, in his vision, in his fingers. The fingers of the one are red-black. Ain’t even fingers anymore. They stopped being fingers when they turned instead into glass, and shattered. The bones of them are strewn through the snow, and the snow is flecked with bloodspray, and Bucky wants to believe he is going to die. 

He should. He should believe he is going to die. All the evidence, the basic biology, says: you are bleeding out. You are freezing to death. You cannot move your legs. There are wolves in this ravine. 

Did you know, Bucky would say out loud to himself, if his mouth worked, that wolves don’t care if their prey is dead before they start to eat it?

Neither do crocodiles. Or hyenas. Bucky had an irrational fear of hyenas when he was just a kid. Because of their laughing, strangely enough, not because of the eating people alive. Never mind that, being a Brooklyn rugrat, his chances of running across loose hyenas were less than slim, he’d eventually become afraid to sleep, terrified of the hyenas he thought were waiting just outside his door, lurking under his bed with their ugly bat faces and their scissor teeth. 

As far as backward things about hyenas, their laughs, their pteropine heads, and their eating things alive habits aren’t the worst of it. They live in big groups - eighty or more, so where there’s one hyena, there’s another five dozen. They shit white to mark their territory. They’re hunters, but more often, they’re scavengers, finding and eating the dead things. Hyena cubs will fight each other to death over milk, and adult hyenas will eat each other if one of them dies. 

Imagine being a hyena, Bucky imagines telling Steve, or Gabe, or any of the others. And you ain’t even dead yet, and your brother just waltzes up to you and starts eating you. 

If I grew up in hyena society, he says back to himself, not knowing which one he’s supposed to be. I would expect it, probably. 

Probably. 

It has been two days, and he is still not dead. He would have fallen asleep, dying is so boring, but every few seconds what’s left of his arm will send out a flare of agony, just in case he forgot he fell off of a train and mutilated half of his body. Good and responsible of his arm, making sure he doesn’t forget that. He can’t really feel anything else below his neck, which is fortunate, because Bucky knows if he did, he’d have died of the pain already. 

Liar, accuses a voice that’s probably his own, but also sounds like Steve. You’re hungry. 

The two things he can still feel - the slow, throbbing leak as the mangled meat that used to be his left arm resists going numb in the snow, and hunger. 

The fact that he’s not cold probably means he’s gonna die soon. Freezing to death is supposed to feel warm and quiet by the end. Right? Someone told him that. Not sure how they’d know, since they were clearly alive to tell them. He chooses to believe they were a doctor, or a priest, or someone who would know that kind of thing. 

And he doesn’t and doesn’t and still doesn’t die. 

The hyenas, however, come. 

Not in a group of eighty, which is how he knows it’s not real, or if it is, his dying brain is distorting it. Who knows what’s really happening. It lopes through the snow, gait lopsided, tongue lolling out of its spotted mouth, cackling like something straight out of eight-year-old Bucky’s nightmares, followed by another, plodding and drooling. 

He sobs. His mouth doesn’t work. No, no, no, no, please. 

It grasps him by the ribbons of his elbow, its breath and saliva hot as acid, and he can’t even - he can’t even scream right. Its teeth are so hot. Its teeth are burning. Its teeth have to be molten iron, there’s no other way they could burn so much. Bucky sees it drag him, but doesn’t feel his body move. And then he does, but it's - not. It's language, it's a language he could almost know if he focuses on it, human voices, and it's hyenas laughing, and he's sobbing, and whimpering, and he doesn't know. He doesn't know anything. 

He doesn't ever forget. Not fully. 

*** 

THIRTY YEARS LATER 

It is with great boredom that the Soldier listens in on conversations, usually. He is an excellent eavesdropper. He is like furniture to the stupid, and so stupid individuals frequently talk unguarded around him. The downside, of course, is that stupid people never discuss anything interesting. 

But he listens anyway. The Soldier is far from spoiled for entertainment. Especially here, in a cell in Poland, where it seems that no matter which side of the wall he moves to, something is leaking on him. He hopes it's water. Dismally, as his desperately dehydrated throat can confirm, there's no water in here. It's probably something else, whatever's leaking on him. Something worse. It smells awful. He wrinkles his nose. He really does hate to be dirty, even if it's his most common state. 

He shouldn't care whether he's dirty or clean. He should only care about the Motherland, but, he reasons, he can care about the Motherland and about not being drenched in mysterious, probably-bodily-fluid substances at the same time. 

He listens. 

His Polish is just good enough to follow. 

" - my wife," says the guard who put him in here. He's funny. Less dull than the others, at least, but again: the Soldier takes entertainment where he can get it, chewing on his tongue. 

The Soldier wasn't supposed to be here. The General will be upset if he finds out the Soldier was here, in this sodden jail, unless the Soldier gains something from it. Information. Traitor's names. Information that isn't usually forthcoming inside the walls of a rundown prison. Poland is very unhappy, which is why he is here. The plates in his arm attempt to shift as his mood hardens. These countries are ungrateful. They are all so ungrateful. 

"And then she says - " 

And his throat is so dry. He is not desperate enough to try catching the ceiling leak in his mouth, but in a day or so, he will be. 

He will escape before then. Prisons don't hold him, even when his arm has been damaged. And he needs to eat. He will need to get food before he leaves, or else it will be a long way without it. Civilization is scant, where he is. It's all wilderness. 

"Please stop crying," he hears someone say, in English. That's a first. And close to him. He blinks. He's not crying, anyway. He never cries, other than reflexively - not because he's ashamed to cry. His tear ducts just don't work properly. 

The Soldier tilts his head, as if there's something to see. "What did you say?" 

"Not talking to you," is the answer, surly, and it confirms that there's someone in the neighboring cell. 

"Well, good," the Soldier shoots back. "Because I'm not crying." 

No answer, and he rakes his sticky hair away from his face, returning to the guard's conversation. He can't hear it anymore. He sighs. "Who's crying?" 

Silence. 

He goes back to planning his escape. This has all been a waste, he predicts gloomily. He will have to return empty-handed. Anxiety pulses up from his stomach, unbidden. It won't be more than he can bear, but it will be terrible. The General is worse the longer the Soldier has been away. It's been almost a week. Misery will be his defining state for a few days. Maybe longer. 

Focus. 

"Sorry." Female, probably young. "I can stop, if it's bothering you." 

"I don't care," says the Soldier, though he doubts she was talking to him. "Why were you upset?" He realizes how stupid the question is once it's out, wincing. Civilians are usually upset about being incarcerated. Everyone is usually upset about being incarcerated, barring him. "Who are you?" 

"Who are _you_?" She sounds vaguely affronted. The Soldier almost smiles. 

"No one," he says. "It doesn't matter. Who's there with you?" His eyes keep flicking upward, waiting for the guards to return, fingering the half-lifeless plates of his frosted arm, but it's quiet out there. They must have moved while he was talking to the crying girl. Fool, he tells himself, smacking absently at the back of his head. First he says idiotic things, and then he does idiotic things. He hits himself in the ear. 

"My husband." 

Probably the one who told her to stop crying. He doesn't know many husbands and wives, other than the ones he's put to death, together or individually. The General is unmarried. The one who came before him, he thinks, was also unmarried, and he doesn't really know anyone else. It occurs to him that he doesn't seem to know any women. 

That can't be right. 

He shuffles close to the wall again, narrowly avoiding another ponderous drip. That has to be wrong. His memory is full of holes, after all. He has to know at least one. 

"Shut up," he hears the husband hiss. "You think they're ever going to let us out, you bawling like that? Pull yourself together, woman." 

"They're never going to let us out anyway." Her voice thickens with tears. "Do you know where we are? No one knows we're here. They could keep us here forever, and no one would ever know." 

"Just stop crying," the husband says, after a pause. "So I can think. We're going to be fine, you know that, you don't have to be so dramatic." 

The Soldier lays down flat and squints through the vent. The tableau is marred by the grating, but he can see enough: the man, fair, cheeks ruddy from the cold, squats beside the woman, whose hair is inky and messy, and whose hands are rubbing at her shoulders, distressed. Her shoulders shake. 

"Just calm down." 

"I'm calm. I just want to cry for a minute. I'll feel better, after. You know that." 

"You offered to quiet down for our neighbor." Husband flings a hand in the Soldier's general direction. 

"Whatever." She shakes her head. "I don't want to cry anymore, anyway. Good for you. Next time we see your father, you can tell him you broke me of my annoying crying habit along with everything else." 

The man laughs. "I thought you said we were going to be here forever, Nina." 

Nina does not deign to respond. The Soldier likes her, cryer or no. 

He keeps watching. The man stays out of sight. Nina just rubs her arms, and the floor is too wet to stay comfortable laying on it. In the metal corner of the vent, he catches sight of his own reflection. He's filthy. His shirt is filthy mud-brown where it hasn't gone opaque from the wet, and there's dirt and slop on his face and in his hair. It's disgusting. He would give his tongue for a bath. Not even a bath; clean, dry clothes would be enough. 

The mud probably isn't great for his malfunctioning arm, either, but it's already broken. That can't be helped. There is little he can do, at this point, to assuage the General's wrath. 

"Hey, neighbor," says Nina, her voice as dry as her clothes are not. "Do you think it's reasonable to cry when you've been thrown in prison?" 

"Shut up, Nina." 

"I'm only asking a question. What do you think, neighbor?" 

The Soldier drags his organic wrist across his nose, sniffs, and shrugs. "I don't know. Probably. I didn't, though. I don't care, if you want to keep crying. It doesn't bother me." 

"It bothers my husband. Thank you, though." 

The Soldier sniffs again. He might have a cold. He might have had it for years, regardless of whether that should be possible. He can't even remember when his nose wasn't runny. "Your husband seems angry." 

Husband snaps, "So crying is reasonable, but anger isn't?" 

"I didn't say it was unreasonable," says the Soldier, at the same time that Nina says "He didn't say that." 

If the Soldier weren't so accustomed to rudeness, he would have had a much harder reaction to being snapped at. He's stronger than the husband is, surely. If the husband were to make him truly angry, he'd be nothing more than food for carrion. If the shifting snow didn't bury him first. Food for dogs. 

The Soldier sits up. 

*** 

Three hours pass. 

During which time the husband asks thrice where the guards are - as if the Soldier would know - and Nina twice starts to sing to herself, only to be quieted, and then smacks her husband in the chest. The ceiling continues to leak. The Soldier is quiet, thinking. A snatch of conversation echoes down the hall from their cells. So the guards are still here, after all. Good. 

"I know how to escape," he finally tells the vent. 

The ground sloshes as Nina - he can tell it's her, because she's lighter - sidles over, followed by her husband. "What?" Her voice cracks, and she clears her throat. 

The man is dubious. "Even if you could, there's nothing but wilderness around for miles. You'd die." 

"He's right. There aren't even animals, or edible plants, or running water. You'd die of exposure." 

"I've been in worse places than this." The Soldier is attempting to pick a pebble out of his arm-plates, and is only succeeding in pushing it in deeper. "Which is how I know how. But I'll need your help." 

Silence again. 

It blankets them. He fidgets. Long silences have never been comfortable for him. "Did you hear me?" 

"I heard you," Nina says. "I don't know if I believe you, though." 

The Soldier opens his eyes as wide as they'll go. "You don't trust me?" 

"We just met you." Husband. 

"Well," the Soldier says lightly. "If you would rather stay here, then, well, you should do what you want. I would choose to escape, but." So much talking is exhausting, so he closes his eyes. "If you're going to make a bad choice like that, it's your pierogi." His eyes snap open. "Prerogative." 

Nina laughs. 

The husband doesn't. "Okay," he rasps. "Fine. We'll help you." 

"We are?" Nina. 

"You were right," he says in a whisper. "No one knows we're here. No one is coming for us. We either get out with this person, or we never get out at all. Or we don't get out for months. Or years." 

"He's right." The Soldier tilts his head back, hoping gravity will work against his running nose. "No one will come and save you." Everywhere that is not the Motherland - and even some places within the Motherland - most people only cared for themselves. Someone could name you a friend one day and leave you to die on the next. Outsiders are untrustworthy. Especially with one another. Whoever may have once treasured this girl and her husband - mothers, brothers, children - would forget about her within weeks. The Soldier knows. He has seen the selfishness of people. Mothers abandon their children in their greatest need with upsetting frequency. Brothers kill one another as regularly as the sun rises. 

He shakes off the thought. There will be other times to think about mothers and children and abandonment. "If you want to escape, you have to help me." 

The silence is shorter by half this time. "What do we do?" asks the husband. 

"Keep watch." 

They agree to it so quickly that the Soldier blinks. He had anticipated more argument, even had some useful persuasive phrases at the ready. "What are we keeping watch for?" 

Nina's voice is annoyed and breathy. "The guards, idiot." 

The Soldier has cause to believe that the guards won't be back within the next ten minutes, but it doesn't really matter. What he is about to do will cause enough racket to call them back. If all goes well, he'll be out by then, Nina and the other on his heels. 

His arms are too large to reach through the bars and snap the lock. Instead he runs a finger along the seam of the iron door. 

"What are you - " 

"Wait," the Soldier and Nina say together. 

There is a place, scarcely noticeable, at the corner of the cell door, where the metal is rust-caked and creaky, that is just brittle enough. Only just. He can dent it just be pressing against it with his knuckles. He could put his knee through it. And once the first hole has been made, the others come easy. The Soldier once broke out of a coffin a similar way. His arm had been working, then. He doesn't need it, though, then or now. 

He scrapes his hair from his eyes with the inside of his elbow, and knees a hole through the corner of the door. It comes away bleeding, but the sound was a fearsome iron splinter, and the jagged hole's insides give easily to another, this time with his boot. He kicks again. And again, hearing footsteps - the guards are on their way. The hole crumbles. Widens. Rust crackles. The leak in the ceiling continues, and when the gap is just wide enough, the Soldier sucks in his stomach and wiggles through. 

It is not an easy fit; sharp metal catches his shirt and opens the skin below. Blood blooms. He can't imagine how germ-infested it much be. He imagines he can already feel the itchy rot of infection. 

This is when the guards arrive. 

And see nothing but the dripping, ragged space in the door where the Soldier was only seconds before. They're confused, shout interrogative nothings at Nina and her husband. Nina, of course, has the benefit of not speaking Polish. She says nothing. From his place hidden in the alcove, the Soldier waits. 

"What the hell?" 

People say that, around the Soldier. Frequently. He pulls his legs up under him. There are only four. (Guards, not legs.) After he kills the first, maybe the others will run away. Or maybe they won't. Either way, they'll be dealt with. 

Privately, he hopes they run. 

"What happened here?" asks the guard, the funny one, slow as a glacier. He moves into the Soldier's line of sight. Another shadows him. The Soldier sighs, moves, and kills them both. 

Quick. He's so quick. The first barely had time to register the event as the Soldier braced and snapped his neck, the sound a grinding _pop-pop_ rather than a crack, and the other, though he gets a good look, doesn't get anything else. The Soldier dashes his head against the wall. Nina screams. Another reasonable reaction; the blood caught her across the face. 

It's on the Soldier's face, too, warm and wet, and the brain matter, too. He can taste both. Nina's shaking She shakes harder when the Soldier hauls open her door. "I'm not going to hurt you," he says. She doesn't move. "Bring your husband, and come." 

*** 

They spill into what looks like a blizzard. None of them are clear on where they are, or what this is. For a police precinct, it's oddly isolated. It's not secure enough to be a real prison, and yet what else has cells? It's all perplexing. Perhaps it's important. The Soldier may tell the General about it when he returns. 

Now, he sneaks a glance at Nina. Her hair makes her easy to see in the snow. 

"We don't have any food," she shouts. 

They will. 

They don't move as easily through the swirl as the Soldier would have preferred, he thinks, annoyed. It's not their fault. He doubts anyone but him could see through these flurries, but Nina and her husband are so slow. 

Who are they, these stranger foreigners lost in Poland, so slow and helpless? 

"I can carry you," he offers. 

They decline. 

Still, it's slow going, and after a time, the Soldier begins to pass in and out of their sight. He's only checking ahead for shelter, he assures them. His intestines curl. 

"Here," he tells them, soft, eventually. "Follow me." 

"We can't see you!" 

"Just follow." 

They are alone, shivering, blind, fragile in the wind. Nina's curly head turns. She can't track his movement. Her hands rub again at her arms, the same way they did in the cell, probably to soothe as well as ward off the cold. The snow leaves her skin red and her eyes watering. She looks about to cry again. 

The Soldier is patient. Patient, and hungry. 

The husband drops first. 

The exhaustion, or the freeze, the Soldier doesn't know. Whatever the factors, the result is the same. The husband drops to his knees and faints with a threadbare groan. His limbs twitch. Poor thing. Pity is an emotion the Soldier had long thought extinguished in him, and now he feels a dull stab of both pity and grief below his ribs. Neither are enough to stop him. 

Nina hasn't yet noticed her husband's fall when the Soldier quietly twists his fingers through his brown hair - hazelnut, lighter than the Soldier's own, almost red, and soft even when it is wet. 

His breathing is there but faint, until the Soldier pulls out his windpipe. 

Stiff fingers, one hard pull, and then it's done and gushing. His limbs do more than twitch. They flail in the dying thrash, and while he's bleeding, the Soldier tests his muscle tone. Not too gamey, not too marbled. 

"Oh my God," says Nina. she screams once, and then only shakes. "Oh my God. Oh, God. What did you do. What did you do." 

The Soldier looks up at her. The snow hasn't cleaned him. Flowers of his own blood still stain the clinging fabric of his soaked shirt. Blood and brain have crusted into his hair and shoulder. By his knee, and her husband's open throat - whose name he never learned, it occurs to him - his right hand is wet and red and fresh and warm. But his eyes are guileless. Wet. His eyes are running, presumably from the cold. 

"We have to eat," he tells her. 

He is better than a hyena. Her husband is already dead. 

**Author's Note:**

> _"In Siberia, when planning escape, you take weak person with you. They are called 'sandwich' because you eat them."_
> 
> "Scarred by Many Past Frustrations." _Orphan Black_ BBCA
> 
> -
> 
> I wrote this in a NOTEBOOK with a PENCIL like in the olden days. If you liked it, please leave comment/kudos! If you didn't, that's understandable, please have a nice day.


End file.
